After hearing John Ortberg speak at this year’s Leadership Summit about his new book, I knew I had to get it. It’s called Who Is This Man and looks at the life of Jesus in a historical context. It speaks powerfully into the impact and legacy of the life of Christ. I knew that I needed to read this on my iPad so that I could have all of my quotes available. This is an extremely quotable book.

If you are a Christian, this book will remind you of the amazing God we follow. It will stir your love for Christ. For those of you who are still journeying with your opinions about God it will present to you a compelling case of what Jesus Christ has meant to our world. There is no escaping or denying His impact.

For those of you that follow my ongoing reading list, this is one of the few books I’ve given a 5 star rating.

The historical impact of Jesus’ thinking is so pervasive that it is often taken for granted. The record of his life and teaching, the Gospels, have impacted the world so much that they have been translated into 2,527 languages. The second-most-translated book, Don Quixote, has been translated into about 60 languages.

In America, the first law to require mass universal education was declared in Massachusetts in 1647. It was called, believe it or not, “The Old Deluder Satan Act.” “It being one chief product of that Old Deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures…; and to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers.” This is a beautiful vision that everyone should learn: that ignorance is the devil’s tool, that God is the God of truth.

Jesus’ followers have often behaved worse when they have possessed political power than when they were persecuted by it.

The word hypocrite is used seventeen times in the New Testament. Every time it is used, it is used by Jesus. I know of few other words that are so singularly his. “It is clear from the literary records that it was Jesus alone who brought this term hypocrisy and the corresponding character into the moral record of the Western world.”

It is in Jesus’ name that desperate people pray, grateful people worship, and angry people swear. From christenings to weddings to sickrooms to funerals, it is in Jesus’ name that people are hatched, matched, patched, and dispatched.

Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan wrote, “Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western Culture for almost twenty centuries. If it were possible, with some sort of super magnet, to pull up out of the history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left?